The original lions that adorned Calgary’s Centre Street Bridge may get bumped off plans for public art for this century’s great Calgary transportation achievement, the west LRT.

For the $3 million in public art slated to go along the new CTrain line, council has recommended the preservation or reuse of the three lion statues taken off the bridge in 1999, and left to crumble ever since in a southeast city maintenance yard.

Their sibling was restored as a photo-friendly sentinel in front of City Hall, not long after four replicas went up on the bridge. In the west LRT art fund council reasoned it had finally found some funds to restore or somehow display the rest of the 1916 pride.

The public, it turns out through consultations, doesn’t share the zeal for the heritage of those 98-year-old heritage cats.

“It’s not a dead issue, (but) I think maybe the roar of the lions might be a little bit muted right now,” west-end Coun. Richard Pootmans said.

The city is welcoming feedback at calgary.ca until Monday, but at a workshop this spring, public art staff laid out a perilous route for the concrete sculptures to make it to the LRT stations.

They’re fragile, and may not survive being transported — the most deteriorated of the trio must be decapitated before it’s moved, an unreleased assessment report states.

They would need to be covered from the elements (they’re now under blue tarps), and must be kept away from vandals, officials told the workshop. Even after restoration — which would cost $625,000 for all three — they likely couldn’t withstand vibrations, which three-car trains produce plenty of.

After that downcast report, Calgarians responded with little enthusiasm for the statues.

“Several people said the lions are not relevant for west LRT — they don’t fit the goal or the context — and a few people stated unequivocally, ‘No lions for west LRT,’” a workshop summary report said.

The city will determine what the lion’s role is in the train line’s art by early fall, art and culture manager Sarah Iley said.

It’s not certain the lions will find a home in the west end at all, despite council’s enthusiasm for using them as a new gateway icon for the downtown.

“We may find through this process that there’s less of an opportunity than we thought,” Iley said.

The city has no plan B for preserving the lions if they’re not used on the LRT line, nor any apparent way to fund their preservation. All they get now is regular tarp replacement, something they didn’t get between 1999 and 2010, when they sat in a yard opposite the Calgary Herald building in frayed blue tarps or fully exposed to rain, snow and wind.

A 2012 structural assessment, obtained by the Herald, states that all three could be restored, although councillors have always liked the idea of only restoring one and perhaps doing more creative things with the others — like letting one decay under glass, as a statement about art’s longevity or fragility.

Heritage and art groups have been at odds over the concrete cats’ fate. The city’s public art board is wary of council dictating what is and isn’t art, but is open to letting artists come up with their own treatments of the sculptures.

The city shouldn’t bother with full restoration of any of the crumbling three, board chair Chip Burgess said.

“I don’t think any of us on the public art board see that as a worthwhile public expenditure,” he said.

“We’ve already got the perfect replica sitting in front of City Hall.”

He’s also aware of how unsure city officials are about even trying to revive the lions.

“Somebody actually said ‘If you want to move that lion, you’re actually going to have to use teaspoons as opposed to a forklift.’ It’s that degraded,”

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